Nowadays, a large amount of text data is electronically accessible, e.g. published within large networks such as the internet. For example, authors publish their personal opinions with respect to various topics on their web sites, in user blogs, newsgroups and chat rooms. This information may be of interest for various purposes, such as evaluating a public opinion with respect to a certain topic.
For analyzing text data, it is important to efficiently evaluate a content of the text data, e.g. for determining a respective topic and for evaluating the author's opinion with respect to this topic. It is, however, often very difficult and tedious to identify the topic and the author's opinion and feeling with respect to the topic by analyzing a semantic content of the text data. Thus, there is a need for a method for quickly and accurately identifying important passages of the text with respect to the topic and to the author's opinion to this topic.
It is an object of the invention to provide a method and device for quickly and accurately determining a sentiment of the author expressed within a part of a text, and further for analyzing a large amount of texts with respect to the sentiments expressed by the authors.
This object is solved by a method and a device according to the independent claims.
Further details of the invention will become apparent from the consideration of the drawings and the ensuing description.